


Patchwork Selves

by cynassa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-09
Updated: 2012-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-15 23:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynassa/pseuds/cynassa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU from S5. Gabriel's daughter Hel forces him to see that everyone will die if either Lucifer or Michael win. So he joins Team Free Will which no one at all is happy about. Then he has to face Lucifer, and his three children (Hel, Fenrir and Jorm) can only see one way of making sure he doesn't die, tying him to Sam. This is my story for the sabriel-mini bang.</p><p>Non-graphic violence present. Non-permanent character death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patchwork Selves

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to my betas: [ jonjokeat](http://jonjokeat.livejournal.com) who put my tenses in their places and [schism982](http://schism982.livejournal.com/) who told me what worked and what was just plain self-indulgent. You were wonderful, both of you! Any remaining mistakes are mine. Thanks to my darling, weatherveyn for the lovely title.
> 
> General disclaimer applies.
> 
> My artist [ziarenete13x](http://ziarenete13x.livejournal.com/) who also cast a betaing eye over my fic is wonderful. Just go look at her [pretty art](http://ziarenete13x.livejournal.com/43350.html)! It was a marvelous stroke of luck her wanting to do my fic, and I am very grateful. I have this creepy urge to steal Zia away and bake cookies for her. She went through a lot of hassle trying to get everything done, with problems coming up in the last moment and lj messing up at the worst time, but she was valiant!

“Father, we will all die,” Hel said gravely, the dark, lovely half of her face as quietly terrifying in its wisdom as the gaping rotted white half of her face was horrifying. Her robes, tattered and torn on one side and a simply cut flowing black robe on the other, stood still even as the howling winds on the cliff crumbled away the rock into the dark sea underneath.

Gabriel knew that tone. The human heart of the body he had created froze in fear; funny, he could’ve sworn he had left his heart buried behind him when he left his home permanently, eons ago, but here it was making difficulties again. 

“You can’t beat him. You’re strong, Hel but he’s millennia older than you. He’s been planning this for so long,” Gabriel could feel his voice becoming heavy with pain, “Please, my…my child. I can’t lose you.”

Hel looked pained, “You will lose me if he succeeds. In his arrogance he will kill all of us who walk on this planet,” she told him and the wind dropped its howling for just long enough, so her voice echoed all around, as if the barren cliff and the nearby abandoned houses and the water beneath them all wished to lend their voices to her. 

Gabriel didn’t know how long he stood in the gloom being faced with the facts he had turned away from for so long. That he would lose everyone.

***

Sam was suspicious of him, they all were. Riling them up was the only bit of amusement Gabriel got, now that he’d joined up with the Winchesters and their posse. And if it was a bitter sort of amusement, well, beggars can’t be choosers, as he had told the Winchesters when they were reluctant to accept his help.

Strange, when they had been so eager for it just a few days before. Seemed that they’d rather take a rogue Trickster’s help than an angel’s. All in all, Gabriel approved of this first bit of caution he has seen from them.

He’d casually told them that they were going about things wrong. Settled down on a magnificently gaudy couch he had snapped up and crunched on sweet things that looked like crackers and that, strictly speaking, didn’t belong in this galaxy. 

“The four Horsemen’s rings together are the key to unlock big bro’s cage. You’ve already got one, and two others are out and about. Lucifer’s going to have to bring up Death and chain him to get him to agree to get mixed up in this business. If he knows we’re trying to stop Lucifer, Death might help us out. We’ll still have to figure out some way of tricking Lucifer into the Cage and that definitely won’t be the easy bit.”

“Apocalypses don’t generally have easy bits. They have the dying bits and more dying bits,” he added, in a gossipy tone.

Sam’s fists clenched visibly and Gabriel felt a vicious sense of pleasure that heightened his misery rather than taking it away.

He crunched down particularly loudly on the next sweet.

***

“You dad-damned mutt, I was trying to stop you from breaking the world! I’m sorry I didn’t have time to take care of your pwecious widdle feelings,” Gabriel finished the sentence shouting, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“You know what,” Sam said, and he was so angry his words ran together.

Gabriel rolled his eyes and made a dismissive gesture with his hand.

Sam went on, “I’m done with this, I’m not okay with you, and I am never going to be, and the only reason I’m not getting out the holy oil right now is because Castiel seems to trust you.”

Gabriel tilted his head back to look at the ceiling, and one side of his mouth pulled down mockingly. “Oh, however will I manage without your approval.”

Sam closed his eyes and counted from twenty down to negative fifty, and reminded himself that it was just like dealing with Dean. There was the whole lecherous thing, and the unfunny tricks thing. Oddly enough it didn’t seem to help.

Sam wondered how come God gave all His Heavenly children cosmic powers but didn’t manage to give a single one of them the emotional maturity of a twelve year old.

“Does being passive-aggressive help a lot?” Gabriel asked, widening his eyes mockingly with an unpleasant smile hovering at his lips.

“Actually, yes. More when I can’t hear you,” Sam said, as calmly as possible to piss Gabriel off and walked determinedly out the door.

***

Gabriel leaned against the car and casually sent the three of them off to fight Pestilence with gas masks jazzed up to protect them. He hadn’t mentioned that the gas masks didn’t need to look like gas masks because, really, where was the fun in that? He kept an ear out for Castiel, who was so damnably near Fallen that it didn’t make any difference. It was only the essence of him that still had Grace and always would. 

The hum of the world filled him now that he wasn’t blocking it out. I have led three hundred more humans to the underworld today, Father, before their time. I don’t know how many other creatures. He must be stopped, his daughter’s voice came to him. His heart tightened in fear; he was almost sure Hel wouldn’t do anything stupid but he wasn’t absolutely sure. And really, doing anything at all except throwing in the towel and begging Lucifer for mercy was stupid.

Gabriel sensed that Castiel had lost his mask and he tensed up. He had only a split second to decide whether he should risk giving himself away by snapping it back on from here or risk Castiel becoming even more depleted in the time it took him to get away from Pestilence.

Then Gabriel laughed out loud as the kid struggled up and cut the ring off Pestilence along with the finger it was on and Sam and Dean both shot Pestilence with Gabriel’s mistletoe based bullets. They wrapped him in healing magic and shoved him out of his form, scattering him into smoke. He’d be able to reform soon enough but it gave them enough time to rush out of the building and down to where Gabriel was waiting.

Gabriel looked them over when they were in the car driving back to wherever the Winchesters hung out with Castiel. It was a primitive way to travel but they were making plans about Famine and he had to be there to make sure they didn’t mess up any more than necessary. He had healed Castiel, removing the diseases Pestilence had implanted in him but he was still in bad shape and Gabriel couldn’t really cure the root of his ailment. Castiel would die as a human, without hearing the heavenly choir, without his wings, without his Grace, and without a soul in him promising him an afterlife. An abomination; something that should never have existed.

Yet another thing to blame on the Winchesters. He didn’t clean them up. They could stand to wear a little of the shit they had started. 

They passed by a river, or the dried remains of one and Jormungandr spoke to him, telling him that half the seas were dry already and the fishes and the squid and all the rest of the sea creatures were dying, gasping for breath and the plants are withering away, Father.

Gabriel shoved it to the back of his head and refused to mourn.

***

Gabriel didn’t know whether this was a bad idea or an epically bad idea, on the level of starting the Apocalypse, but it was giving him the creeps. He wasn’t even sure this plan would work, and if it did, and they managed to keep Death from being summoned, he wasn’t sure what he would do about getting the last of the rings. He didn’t know if the Winchesters or Cas or that Singer guy, knew that there was only one way to kill an archangel: on the point of an archangel’s sword.

He wasn’t going to volunteer the information. He was already helping them lock up his brother (again, you’re helping to lock up Lucifer again, his mind reminded him). He wasn’t going to help them kill him too. He’d disabused them of the notion that Samuel Colt’s quaint little gun would be of any use. He considered that as going above and beyond his duty, already.

He paced around in the metal and dust desert that Singer called a salvage yard and wondered what the hell he was doing, getting Sam to gatecrash Lucifer’s party and distract him long enough for Gabriel to get the bottles away or in this case, the chains for Death.

Then he’d heard it, the rumble of his children gathering and there wasn’t any more time to think or for anything else. He grabbed the Winchesters and Cas and their car and flew.

***

Sam wasn’t sure why he volunteered for this, except of course that this entire thing was his damn fault in the first place and Gabriel had been so panicked, spitting out his words instead of drawling them.

So he was going to distract the Devil and hope he didn’t get captured. Gabriel was going to get his kids away (Sam’s mind boggled at the idea of irresponsible, flighty Gabriel with children) and Cas and Dean were going to grab the chains Lucifer needed to hold Death. And hopefully they’d all still be alive to celebrate in the morning.

He squinted at his watch in the dark of the forest, almost ten minutes left until Cas would be set up with the sealed box and the magic…tongs that they’d need to hold the chains without dying painfully.

Then he saw them. The children of Loki. 

Hel formed from the shadows and the moonlight and was ethereal where she wasn’t as viciously real as the monsters under your bed. The scent and sound and sight of death formed her robes.

Fenrir rose from the ground. Either the forest floor broke apart to let him out, or he was the ground and was gathering himself together to make his stand. His low growl shook the earth and the trees nearby seemed to arch away in fear.

Sam wondered when the third one would appear, the serpent Jormungandr, and then he realized that he was already there. One moment he was a grass snake, sliding under everyone’s notice, the next he was a anaconda towering over everyone and a blink of an eye later, he was big enough to swallow the world.

Sam stepped back involuntarily, his bones felt too brittle and his skin felt too exposed.

Then Lucifer walked towards them and Sam’s ears filled with the buzz of their power and it was like he could sense it in his blood. As if he could step forward with his hand out and use the power as his own. A moment later, he struggled up and only dimly remembered falling to his knees. It wasn’t gravity but the heavy weight of power in his blood that had dragged him down. He struggled onwards regardless because he remembered the look on Gabriel’s face and he remembered losing Jess, and Dad and (above all) Dean and if he could stop it from happening to Gabriel then he would.

He stepped between the Devil and three pagan gods. 

***

I died. 

Look at my life. In anyone else’s story, that would have been the climax. Not an eye in the theatre would have been dry. But me? I got stuck with the fucking selfless Winchesters who make a habit of dying. 

That fool Sam Winchester went and shielded my kids from good ol’ Luci. What the hell did he think he could have done except died with them? Hell, they knew he was Lucifer’s vessel. They might have killed him themselves and he knew that. Fucking, heroic, idiot.

It gave me just enough time to take away the chains meant for Death and hide them and send a double to appear in front of Winchester and tell him to take them, Hel and Jorm and Fenrir, and go. 

Then I made my very last stand.

I pulled out my sword and tried my best trick, stood up against my clever big brother for the sake of the world.

I let my double occupy his attention, talk big and challenge him, he never could resist having the last word. He seemed to be fooled but then he flipped around and grabbed my sword out of my hand and he didn’t even hesitate before he killed me. 

Damn him.

After that… I don’t know. I should have died. I should have become just so much nothing. I think I was dead for a moment there. But then I was…close to it but not quite dead. Not that I’ve had experience but dead’s pretty…dead. Like, gone. Poof! You’re done here, only the white flowers left.

Me? I seemed to be stuck with Sam Winchester.

Not in his mind, thank whatever good luck we hadn’t yet used up between the two of us. But stuck to him, body and soul (take note of that, it’ll be important later.) It was enough to let me see what he was seeing and sometimes feel what he was feeling.

I saw him working through the Apocalypse. It wasn’t pleasant. Lucifer called Death out and set him free even though I’d got the chains away. I suppose he thought that he could make some sort of deal with Death, though he should have known better. Or maybe he thought that it didn’t matter who died so long as they did.

I didn’t even know him anymore. Lucifer had always been single-minded, but he’d never been so recklessly destructive. The sharpest blades are the most brittle, can’t have one without the other.

Surprisingly, it was Dean who managed to make a deal with Death. Or, let’s be honest here, among friends, Death ordered him to take care of business and he ‘yes-sirred.’ Kid might be pretty but he’s not always dumb.

Sam could use a little of his smarts. Going after Famine and not even realizing it? I could blame that bit on Castiel, he should have known that the Cupids were too sappy to do something as wickedly clever as letting lovers eat each other up.

But handcuffing yourself to a sink when there were demons out to do Lucifer’s bidding? Not smart at all. But then, he wasn’t thinking was he?

I was like that, the first hundred years I was cut off from Heaven. I thought my brief excursions to make up my identity as a Trickster would be enough practice to manage. I screamed until the human throat tore and then I dug into the ground until the human nails tore and my human hands bled and my human eyes couldn’t see and my human ears heard so much that it made my human mind ache. And I still ached to hear the voices again and feel the Grace of the siblings I had left behind for good.

Sam breathed in and smelled the blood he needed and he breathed out and felt his stomach ache with needing it. And then two demons stepped in and threatened him, and then they threatened his brother. Not very smart of them. I suppose I should have been disgusted with what Sam did to them but they had taken two humans and broken them and killed them and their families for fun. I was more worr…occupied by what Sam was going through. 

He handled matters with style, I must say. 

Ripped Famine apart from the inside out with the demon souls he had eaten because of his gluttony. A certain sort of poetic justice in that. Sam didn’t have quite my aplomb but then who does? I raised a toast to his bloody-minded determination two years ago, back in Broward County. If I had a drink now or hands to raise it with, I would do it again.

Then came the end. When it was still something I had to worry about, I had wondered whether Deano would even be able to let Sam go this time, when the fate of the whole world depended on it. He hadn’t realized what was coming, I think only Sam had figured out what it would take to trap my brother back in his prison. What the sacrifice would be. Who the sacrifice would be.

No one wants to know the secret. That he was scared. Fucking terrified. Didn’t want to do it.

He jumped anyway, because he had promised his brother it would be okay and he had lied to him so many times and he couldn’t bear to do it again. 

And that is why my death isn’t the climax. With big damn heroes like that around, how could it be? Still. They could’ve had a bottle of champagne on me.

Truth is, Singer’ll tell you and so will Dean Winchester and Castiel and Castiel’s vessel Jimmy Novak, that there’s no winning this sort of war. You just minimize your losses. Sometimes, like Singer or Castiel, you have enough left to make it worth it. Sometimes, like Dean or that poor bastard Novak, you lose your whole world.

Stick around, it only gets worse. 

It wasn’t unending pain in my brothers’ prison. Mostly Lucifer and Michael were snarling at each other. But Sam was pretty much their only other amusement. Michael had let go of that other Winchester when he was falling in with Sam and Lucifer. Say what you like about Michael, but he keeps his promises. Whatever he had promised that poor kid, the kid got it.

Sam broke. Best thing to do really. Michael didn’t really have the imagination to do more than beat him up and Lucifer wanted to break him. Once he was broken there was no more fun in it.

I…tried to send him some comfort. I don’t know what he got. I don’t know how long he was there because he doesn’t know how long he was there. But it was a long time. And his human mind was just beginning to comprehend what ‘eternity’ really meant.

Then something tried to lift him out. Lucifer and Michael tried to hitch rides. If they had worked together they might even have gotten through. As always, they clawed at each other and ruined everything in the process. They tore Sam apart. His body got lifted out of the Cage and part of me went with it, the rest of us stayed behind.

The thing is, bodies are important. Forget all the things you learn in Bible class or madrasas or Hindu pathshalas or whatever the hell they're called. You wouldn't go out of your house without clothes on would you? I wouldn't recommend leaving your body and going around in your soul either. It's the same thing, exposing yourself to the elements and feeling the blast without anything to take the heat.

That was astronomically worse, of course. When is anything to do with the Winchesters not? Lucifer took advantage of all the new ways he could torture Sam. I felt it too. I think I could have blocked it out; I was sure by then that Sam didn't know I was there. Still, if I couldn't do anything else for the kid, I could still be here. Not like I had any place else to be.

Upstairs was both better and worse. Upstairs, I got to see Sam's body along with his worst instincts going around being (literally) a soulless killing machine. But at least some part of him was safe. 

It was bizarre seeing his mother's family. I had been aware that his mother must have been a Campbell and Sam had relatives. I just hadn't even thought of him with anyone but Dean. When I looked at him I expected to see Dean by his side, or at his back. Not these people, even if they seemed to be good hunters, professional. They were too professional; never trust people who kill without heart. I didn't trust them. Neither did he, proving that he was smarter then than with a soul.

The jarring part was that he spent a hundred years without Dean. Or just a year, I can't...time passed weirdly. I think it was a hundred years or more for Sam's soul. Much less for Sam's body. For me? No clue. What was I anymore? Did I exist? Maybe I was a figment of Sam's imagination.

Such are the thoughts of a murdered archangel attached to Sam Winchester. 

I think the itching got too much for him. I think that massive intellect (and Sammyboy, aren't you terrifyingly smart when you're not burdened by your humanity?) decided it was more of a disadvantage not having Dean around than having him around, however out of touch with hunting, however weak with his conscience. Like a tragic hero and his tragic flaw. Funny, if he could have let go of Dean, then the whole world would be different.

 

It worked. The moment he saw Dean, some deep part of him just calmed down, whispered, 'safe.' And it bled through to all of me. The weak thing humans had instead of Grace, Father called it a soul, it wasn't a fair exchange. Sam's soul wasn't going to last against the renewed fury of Lucifer and Michael. Not that he could die, poor fucker. I had thought that he'd already given up his last metaphorical breath and was just going to stay down and wait for them to forget him and continue their own fight. Then he sensed Dean.

He grew brighter. I...from my position, it was like I had spent all this time with my eyes closed. And it had been dark outside. Now, there was light and it was showing through my lids. Sparks of light burnt my eyes. I felt like I was clawing through veils.

There was all this, stuff…everywhere. Somewhere ahead was sound, light, things that I had to reach. I felt like I had form.

Everything happened around me, Lucifer and Michael had their little games with Sam's soul and Sam's eyes flickered over the space between Dean and Sam's body that had always been tiny before but was increasing now. Dean could tell something wasn't right, that Sam wasn't right. And even a Sam without his soul did his damndest to fix that situation. Sam kept inching towards Dean and I moved forward too, only I didn't know my destination. It was satisfying enough just to have one.

Imagine standing in a room... dark, or white, or anything. Whatever you imagine will be wrong. Then imagine that the room has just one tiny hole, and you can see the world spilling in through it. But you can't find the hole, because you're blind, and deaf, and dumb except for some occasional short seconds. If you think that's what I went through, you're wrong. But it's about as close as I can get to explaining it.

Then I broke, and Sam's soul broke and Sam's body broke and we joined again but it wasn't in the right places. “Hello, boys,” I tried to say, but I didn’t have the voice for it. Then I collapsed, into this vortex of twisty stuff that was like aspirin applied topically. Only it worked better.

Later, when I dragged myself out, I realized it was Sam’s mind I had fallen into.

***

Dean gaped from the half-dead brother who had collapsed in his arms to the archangel he could have sworn was dead, on the floor. There was only one thing to do in this situation.

“Cas,” he bellowed, dragging the Sam to the nearest bed. 

Cas walked in saying, “Dean, I have work…” and then stopped abruptly, his head swivelling almost comically from Gabriel to Sam. He looked sharply at Dean and Dean felt an instinctive protest rise to his lips, how the hell could this be his fault? He suppressed it and instead jerked his head at Gabriel.

“I don’t know what happened. Just showed up out of nowhere and scared the shit outta me.”

Cas picked Gabriel up and deposited him on the other bed, Sam's bed. He looked over the body carefully before putting a hand on it. For a moment, he and Gabriel, seemed to flicker in and out of sight. Then they became solid again and Cas stumbled forward and grabbed onto the bed to stop himself from falling over, before he turned around and headed for Sam. 

"Whoa, what's the damage." Dean said, tensing up from his relaxed stance to lift up his arms, palms up towards Cas, "Chill, man." Sam had been messed about enough over the past few years, Dean had no intention of allowing him to be pulled around without an explanation, even by Cas.

"I need to see if Sam has anything foreign in him, something of Gabriel," Cas snapped at him.

Dean took a moment to process that and Cas took advantage of his surprise, pushed him aside and dived at Sam.

“Hey!" Dean said, grabbing at Castiel's hand. But Cas already had it on Sam's chest, eyes flaring so white that Dean had to shut his own tight and lift his hands instinctively to protect against it.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he opened his eyes to see Cas looking at him uncertainly, "Are you hurt?"

Dean shook his head and Cas added, rather stiffly, "The process has not hurt Sam, nor could it have."

Dean snorts at the tone, "Okay, but what was the process and why would Sam have...ah," Dean wrinkled up his nose and finished, "parts of your dick brother in him? What does that mean?"

Cas looked frustrated as he glanced from Gabriel to Sam and then back to Dean, "Their essences are mixed up."

Dean considered whiskey; it was ten in the morning but fuck, some talks just called for whiskey.

"And how the hell did that happen?" Dean asked.

"It appears to be pagan magic," Cas said, "I suspect Gabriel's children may have tied him to Sam when he died," he stumbled over the word, 'children.' Dean sympathized - he had seen it but he still didn't believe it.

"How do we fix them?" Dean asked, and the look on Cas' face was the last straw. Dean went and rummaged in his bag for the bottle he had been keeping handy.

"I need to be in Heaven," Cas said, "I will let you know if I find anything out."

Dean spluttered and put the bottle down and tried to protest, but Cas had already left. 

***

"He's not lying," Sam said, not looking at Dean. 

"You don't know that," Dean told him and stopped him when he opened his mouth to argue, "He's an archangel, he could be making you see things. He could have done anything!"

"He saved our lives Dean," Sam said, turning to face Dean "And he gave us the plan to beat Lucifer."

"Yeah, and I was beginning to think he was an okay guy but now he seems to be stuck in your head, Sam!" Dean said, his voice getting louder and Sam suddenly realized he was scared. 

“He isn’t lying,” Sam said, “I remember it. I remember being stuck down there without my body and I remember feeling flashes of…of you.” They turned away from each other, embarrassed at what Gabriel had told them, mockingly, that apparently it was Dean’s presence (with Gabriel and his power as a conduit) that had dragged Sam’s soul back into his body. The word, ‘presence’ was unpleasantly emphasized. 

“I think I remember him trying to uh…protect me. Dean, man, you know even Bobby said I should be a corpse or in a coma or locked up in a psych ward after coming back from the Cage. But I’m not,” Sam spread out his arms and said, “I’m fine. There is no way I should be but I am. I really do have bits of his Grace and his memories.” 

Dean looked frustrated, tried to speak, shut his mouth again and then finally sat down on the bed beside Sam. 

“He’s dangerous, and he’s not on our side,” Dean said.

“He’s not on anyone’s side except his own,” Sam said, shrugging, “He really doesn’t want the world destroyed. Trust me on this one.” Then he wished he hadn’t said it, because the look on Dean’s face said, clear as a signboard, that he wasn’t sure he should. 

***

You were going to die, facing him. I tied you to him, my brothers helped. How could we let you die? Hel whispered, the earth and winds carrying it up to him from the prison to which she was bound again. Gabriel sent back tendrils of love and loss and bittersweet happiness that she was safe even if he wouldn’t see her again until the End of Days. 

Gabriel considered what she’d said, there was some relief in knowing that no one would turn up out of the blue with some nefarious plan involving his and Sam’s connection. But the chances of the connection being caused by someone unknown had been low.

So now what was Gabriel to do? His days of dealing out judgment seemed over. In the month since he had left the Winchesters behind, he had found more than one asshole to punish, and snapped his fingers to set them up in appropriate scenarios. Inevitably, he’d found himself unable to kill them, even if they were irredeemable – he’d found himself making elaborate plots to put them in jail instead. Because of Sam fucking Winchester and his fucking feelings. Because killing them wasn’t the right thing to do. 

Sometimes he just wanted to grab the boy by the neck and ask him, do you empathize with the whole world?

Gabriel wasn’t so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice Castiel arriving, and Castiel wasn’t trying to hide himself.

“You have not come to Heaven.” Castiel said, disapprovingly, and Gabriel wondered when a little second bench angel had learned to speak like a General of the Heavenly Army.

“Yeah, kinda have a lot of things to do down here. Punishing people, causing havoc, you know how it goes,” Gabriel told him, spreading out his arms in a carefully careless gesture.

Castiel tilted his head to look at him even more disapprovingly, “There’s a war going on, Heaven is falling to pieces. Earth will break too, if Raphael wins.”

Gabriel didn’t respond. He saw Castiel’s fists clenching and wondered if he was going to take a swing at him. It almost amused him, wondering whether Dean Winchester had been teaching an angel how to fist fight.

Finally Castiel said, “You should go to Sam, he misses you as well.”

Gabriel felt a deep rage rising in him. Who the hell was this puny weakling to talk about what he felt? He stood up and let his wings flare out. To his credit Castiel didn’t flinch, but his eyes widened and his own wings curved over him protectively. 

Then Castiel told him, “My war’s in Heaven, not against you,” and his wings rose into the flight position.

Before leaving he told Gabriel, “You are not a coward.” 

Gabriel wanted to call Castiel back and tell him he was a fool, and that Gabriel was a coward in every way possible. But he just sat down, buried his face in his hands and laughed instead, and he had no clue why his hands and his cheeks were wet.

***

“I was in Heaven,” Gabriel announced.

Sam nodded warily, “Cas told us.”

Gabriel didn’t know what to say, so he just looked at Sam, tried to adjust his perception of the fit body against the scarred soul that he remembered.

“How did you do it?” Sam asked him suddenly, “How did you stay away from Heaven? I couldn’t have.” He stopped mid-sentence, the look on Gabriel’s face shutting him up.

From this close, Gabriel could feel the pieces of his Grace that Sam still carried. They curled around in Sam’s blood as if they belonged there. As if they had always belonged there, and he’d only just realized it. He could feel them beckoning him nearer to Sam.

He just… he wanted to touch. He wanted to feel Sam, know that he’d survive. He wanted to tell Sam that he had seen everything Sam had been through and felt his frustration and his fear. He’d heard Sam screaming for help, and felt his hopelessness while he was doing it and didn’t think any less of Sam for it. He wanted to tell him Sam that even the fragments of Sam that Gabriel now had made him want to glance over his shoulder and check that Dean was there, that he got it now, why Sam had broken the world to get his brother back.

He wanted to kiss Sam. That was why he left. 

*** 

A day later, Sam called him and Gabriel came. He thought bitterly that he might as well be leashed for all he could resist Sam’s call. Then he appeared in Sam’s motel room and Sam looked so wrecked, just blinking at him before holding out one shaking hand, that Gabriel grasped it before he knew what he was doing. 

“I…” Sam shook his head and screwed up his eyes, swaying and Gabriel unceremoniously snapped them into the bed and forced Sam to lie back on it.

“I have some of your memories of Heaven, they just came suddenly,” Sam told him, eyes closed tightly against the world.

Gabriel stiffened up and almost left again, but Sam’s grip was tight and his voice was soft and tired. Sam went on, telling him which memories (insensitive asshole) but undertones of misery and need bubbled up to the surface, falling back because Sam was covering them up. Gabriel curled up next to him on the bed because he was so tired of lying to everyone and if anyone understood, if anyone in the whole universe understood and could forgive him, it was Sam.

***

After that it was like they were slowly falling into one another, the tug of the pieces left in each other exerting a magnetic attraction that dragged them together. 

The civil war in Heaven had ground to a halt with half the angels there worshipping Gabriel while the other half considered him a traitor for ever having left. Raphael didn't even acknowledge his existence. 

Later, Gabriel came to Sam, his hands covered in a shimmering, sticky substance that Sam could only really see out of the corner of his eye.

"Dead," Gabriel had spat out, wild-eyed, "She...She was trying to kill another angel. I had to kill her."

The rest of the story came out just as jerkily, that Raphael had looked down at the angel Gabriel had had to execute, then looked straight at him for the first time since the moment he had announced that he was still alive. She had snarled at him, (or rather, the way the angels communicated, she had wrapped her Grace into hooks and curved them into him).

I tried to create order. I tried to keep them safe! she had cried and had shrugged away any attempt at comforting her even while the great bells of Heaven rang discordantly with her great grief.

This is what your free will has brought us to, she’d told Castiel, who had stepped forward to be at Gabriel’s side.

Gabriel could only stare numbly at her before rushing down and away, his instincts taking him to Sam. 

Sam had pulled him into the motel where he and Dean were staying and pushed him down onto the bed and knelt down on the ground between his legs to listen to what he had to say. 

Sam had said, quietly, "It isn't your fault," and had said it sincerely. Gabriel couldn't let go of the guilt so easily with one of his siblings' Grace sticking to his hands and Sam had then curled his hands around Gabriel's face and pressed their lips gently together until Gabriel broke it off to press his face against Sam's chest, as if the world couldn't see him as long as he couldn't see the world.

That night Gabriel had stayed with Sam in his bed, invisible to Dean's eyes. It must have been almost dawn when he told Sam, "It's not your fault."

Sam had looked surprised, and a little guilty, and started shaking his head, "This isn't the time for you to be comforting me."

Gabriel had said flatly, "I'm not going to talk about it again. Sam, listen," and Sam had had to hush him because he was getting loud and Dean would wake up.

In a quieter voice Gabriel had told him that he was a tiny little human and even the youngest and least powerful of the angels were a vast force compared to which a nuclear reactor was a cooking stove. The angels had wanted a war, or at the very least, some of the archangels had. Sam couldn't have stopped them, it would have been like a fly bouncing against a steel container and expecting to break it. Despite some implied and some outright insults, for Sam the realization that it hadn't all been his fault, that Gabriel didn't think so at any rate, felt like breaking out into shallow water when he'd been drowning. 

Gabriel made a game of stealing kisses after that. He’d pop in while Sam was distracted by his research and lean over his chair to bite at his lips and lick in and then leave. Or he’d tell Sam to lean down and have a taste of some snack he'd picked up and capture Sam's lips and suck on his tongue when he did. 

It probably explained why kissing Sam was his first response after Sam and Dean had had a screaming match and almost come to blows when Dean had told him he didn't know how to trust Sam anymore. Sam picked Gabriel up and frantically deepened the kiss. When he’d pulled back, the manic energy had lessened but the desperate fear in his eyes made Gabriel kiss him again on his cheek and tell him it'd be okay.

Sam and Dean had made up later, after Sam bought a six pack of beer and finished half of one can (Dean had finished two in the same time) before he told Dean that he got it, that he remembered what he had done when he was soulless. Dean sat down beside him and shoved him with his shoulder and told him that wasn't his fault, everything he had done while he was actually buried in Hell being tortured by two archangels was automatically not his fault.

After another can each Dean had burst out with, "You're hanging around Gabriel a lot, and you aren't telling me everything. I...I remember how that turned out last time, dude, and..." he had stopped there, looking at a loss. 

Sam had told him that he didn't want to know and then explained in crude detail why he didn't want to know when Dean wouldn't shut up. Dean had spluttered and made faces and quietly told him to be careful. 

The first time Gabriel told Sam he loved him, Sam had been looking at him as if he had never seen him before, as if he was something puzzling and entirely different and it had constricted Gabriel's throat until he croaked out that he loved Sam and Sam's eyes had brightened and he had grinned boyishly before kissing Gabriel breathless.

Sam never said, ‘I love you’ back, except in all the things he did: by getting Gabriel his favourite candy and renting movies Gabriel might like and murmuring comments at crime scenes when he thought Gabriel was bored being bureaucratic up in Heaven and was listening in.

And life went on.


End file.
